Le Lévitique 16:14 Halakha : Shulchan Shel Arba & Arukh HaShulchan

And of these five senses, two are physical, three are spiritual. We have found them in the Holy One Blessed be He: “And the Lord saw;” “and the Lord heard;” and “the Lord smelled;”³⁷⁹Gen 5:5, Nu 11:1; Gen 8:21, respectively.but not so the other two. We were given five senses to correspond to the five books of the Torah, and to the five references to “light” in the first chapter of Genesis,³⁸⁰Gen 1:3 (2x), 4 (2x), 5. and the five names of the soul.³⁸¹According to Bereshit Rabbah 14:11, they are nefesh, ruah, neshamah, yehidah(“unity”), and hayah (“animal”). Indeed they are the body’s perfection because they are the palace of the soul, and the soul reveals its actions through them. And the natural scientists said that it was from the wisdom of the design of nature that human beings were created with five fingers on each hand to serve the five senses. Each and every finger has its own sense to serve. The biggest (the thumb) is for wiping the mouth, the index finger for the nostrils, the middle finger for the sense of touch to feel all the parts of the body because it is the longest of all (and can reach everywhere), the ring finger to wipe the eye, and the pinky, which is the smallest of all, to clean the ear. So it is from the wisdom of nature that each and every finger goes to its proper sense organ instinctively and unconsciously. About the order of the fingers our sages z”l said:³⁸²B. Ketubot 5b.”This pinky [is for…], this ring finger [is for…], this middle finger [is for…], this pointer [is for…], this thumb [is for…].” And they already explained at the beginning of tractate Ketubot that each of these five fingers had their own mitzvah: This pinky for measuring the hoshen – the High Priest’s breastplate; this ring finger for the priest’s meal-offering, this index finger [amah –‘the cubit measure’] for building and tools; this index finger [ha-‘etzba’] for sprinkling (the blood of the sin offering)– “he shall sprinkle it with his finger [be-‘etzba’o],”³⁸³Lev 16:14.and this ‘biggest’ which is the widest of all of them, namely, the thumb of Aaron’s hand for purifying someone stricken with skin rot.³⁸⁴These explanations of the purpose of each finger are not the ones the Gemara brings, but are brought by Rashi in his commentary to this passage in b. Ketubot (Chavel). So you find yourself learning that the five fingers on the human body meet the needs of both the individual and of God. And you will find among the wonders of human being’s design that the ability to feel is extended throughout the whole body, and the sense of smell is extended outside the body, and that the sense of hearing is extended even further than smell to the extent that humans need it more, and that the sense of sight is extended even further than hearing because humans need it more. So behold how great a matter this is to all who look into it, for it instructs us about the perfection of human beings with their five senses, for “these are the work of God!”³⁸⁵An allusion to Ex 32:16, referring there to the tablets of the covenant, and hence hinting at R. Bahya’s previous association of the five senses with the five books of the Torah.

28. The idea that the taste of a species with its own kind is nullified by a majority is explained in the Talmud (Menachot 22a). We derive from the service of Yom Kippur, as it is written, "And he shall take of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger upon the cover on the east side, and in front of the cover he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times" (Leviticus 16:14). It is well known that the blood of the bull is more plentiful than that of the goat, and therefore the Torah calls it the blood of the goat. From this, we can conclude that the blood of the bull does not nullify the blood of the goat. Rabbi Yitzchak infers from here that the taste of its species is not nullified, but the Rabbis hold that the reason is that all the sacrifices brought to the altar do not nullify each other due to its holiness. They explain that if the reason for not nullifying the taste is due to it being the same species, then the Torah should have taught us about a case that does not come to the altar. However, since the Torah taught about a case that does come to the altar, we can infer that even the taste of its species is nullified. The Talmud implies that the Sages learned from this verse that similar kinds are nullified, and so too does the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol in his commentary on the positive commandments (mitzvah #138) and the Rashba in his work on the laws of the Temple (Beit HaBechirah, Shaar Aleph).